Trouble logging in?If you can't remember your password or are having trouble logging in, you will have to reset your password. If you have trouble resetting your password (for example, if you lost access to the original email address), please do not start posting with a new account, as this is against the forum rules. If you create a temporary account, please contact us right away via Forum Support, and send us any information you can about your original account, such as the account name and any email address that may have been associated with it.

Most thing cannot be defined as Ice. Even the Volatiles that are sometimes call "ices" have a melting point higher than 100 Kelvin (whcih leaves off Helium for sure). Ice is a specific word.

I am basing of the general distribution of water in the solar system, and that it can be used to produce Oxygen and Hydrogen fairly easily.

Cost for dstibution is entirely based on who can get it and what one is willing to pay for it.

Though they will need Nitrogen as well since the air we breath is not 100% Oxygen.

Simly put, the more things humans need for survival that we can get from other bodies in the solar system are less things we need to try to take away from Earth. Also the less stuff we need to take from Earth the less energy we waste trying to break that much mass out of our own gravity field.

In return, we can bring back stuff we either don't have on this planet, or things we have in low quanities on this planet. While a large surge of certain things will certainly drop their market prices, making some thing no longer rare means that they can be used more commonly in techology and could potentally solve some of out problems just because whatever it is can do something we need, but we don't have enough of it to make whatever it is practical.

Like say daimonds (to use a A.C. Clark analogy). The concept of the Space Elevator is grand but we still don't have the tech to make it work. What if we used daimonds? Well we can't because that would be expensive as hell and we have no were need enough to make daimond hard tube, or whatever it was that was needed to make it work. Find a daimond in space the size of a mountain, and that isn't a problem anymore. The price of daimonds goes the hell, but you can make your tech now.

If scientists think there is enough ice on the Moon to power spacecraft, there should be more that enough to provide drinking water and thus the means to generate Oxygen for the relatively few people that will be out in space in the near future.

If they can produce a viable greenhouse structure on Mars, there should be enough water there to grow plants (assuming the mineral content of the soil is, or can be made good enough to grow plants). With the production of plantlife, the cycles we enjoy here can be reproduced (even if it is only in greenhouses) to maintain an oxygen cycle. In theory, we could eventually Terraform Mars to make it more inhabitable for our species. It may not be as inviting as Earth (it cetainly won't be a massive beach resort planet as I doubt we can ever viably get temperatures there much higher than zero degrees Centigrade), but it will be a start. Plus it might be a place were the "greenhouse gasses" types of polutions are encouraged in an effort to thicken the atmosphere and perhaps make the planet warmer and more inhabitable. Means it might be suited as a factory planet (though you would still need to figure out how to get all the "cheap" labor up there).

Terraforming planets with suitable resources -- I think it's definitely possible in some sci-fi tech scenario several generations down the road. If it were to ever happen, though, the testing period would have to be extremely rigorous and perfected before any attempts at colonization. The results could be terrifyingly disastrous otherwise.

You'd also need to adjust the gravity within your 'biodome' somehow, as we know from extended stays in space by astronauts muscles can weaken significantly in reduced gravity settings, and you'd have to be Son Goku to survive high gravity, of course

All these things take steps to complete. The hardest part is the first steps...as in taking them at all.

It was looking for a few years there like we might not take any more steps. Thus the news of private ventures to mine asteroids seems important, as some of that tech well make other steps even more viable as, not only will the techology have been proven by the mining ventures, but the materials will be easier to get for contruction projects. You'd just need to get the machines to build things into Orbit (and then maybe to the Moon or Mars were there is at least some gravity) because the materials can be delivered much cheaper than if they were forced to send them form Earth all the time.

As for gravity in your "biodome". The human body seems to be able to adapt to low gravity, and perhaps with some training slightly higher gravity. It just has massive problems with zero gravity. It is likely those who would live on Mars might never be able to live on Earth again for long periods of time (or at least not without some time to prepare), as Mars gravity is a little over a third of Earth's gravity. Those on the Moon more so as it is only around a sixth of Earths gravity. But that is more than anything they got on the ISS or any present day spacecraft.

The scale is the current problem with them... Sure you can make nanotubes easily enough and they withstand anything, but they come in tiny pieces with varying lengths. You can't make proper building blocks to a massive structure from that. I still think a space elevator is necessary at some point though...bringing another point: if every vessel is going to stop on Mars for grabbing water and other resources, what's the point of the space elevator? Unless there's another one on Mars.

Oh, and because of the way our planet moves, the most convenient place to construct a space elevator is on the equator. And because it'd be bad to have it in some country's territory or near populated areas, an artificial island somewhere on the oceans would be the best spot. So I wouldn't worry too much about it going up near your backyard.

One crazy vision I have for the future is some immensely rich corporation building such an island and making a space elevator, then using the control over it to put up tons of orbital WMDs and essentially take over the world.